nd of Ruegen.

The monotonous grind of iron on iron begins again, and the coast and the
ferry-boat vanish behind us. Ruegen lies as flat as a pancake on the
Baltic Sea, and the train takes us through a landscape which reminds us
of Sweden. Here grow pines and spruces, here peaceful roe-deer jump and
roam about without showing the slightest fear of the noise of the engine
and the drone of the carriages.

Another ferry takes us over the narrow sound which separates Ruegen from
the mainland, and we see through the window the towers and spires and
closely-packed houses of Stralsund. Every inch of ground around us has
once been Swedish. In this neighbourhood Gustavus Adolphus landed with
his army, and in Stralsund Charles XII. passed a year of his adventurous
life.

In the twilight the train carries us southwards through Pomerania, and
before we reach Brandenburg the autumn evening has shrouded the North
German lowland in darkness. The country is flat and monotonous; not a
hill, hardly even an insignificant mound, rises above the level expanse.
Yet the land has a peculiar attraction for the stranger from Sweden. He
thinks of the time when Swedish gun-carriages splashed and dashed
through the mud before the winter frost made their progress still more
difficult and noisy. He thinks of heroic deeds and brave men, of early
starts, and horses neighing with impatience at the reveille; of
victories and honourable peaces, and of the captured flags at home.

If he is observant he will find many other remembrances in the North
German low country. Boulders of Swedish granite lie scattered over the
plain. They stand out like milestones and mark the limits of the
extension of the Scandinavian inland ice. During a colder period of the
world's history all northern Europe was covered with a coat of ice, and
this period is called the Ice Age. No one knows why the ice embraced
Scandinavia and the adjacent countries and swept in a broad stream over
the Baltic Sea. And no one knows why the climate afterwards became
warmer and drier, and forced the ice to melt away and gradually to leave
the ground bare. But we know for a fact that the boulders in northern
Germany were carried there on the back of an immense ice stream, for
they are composed of rocks which occur only in Scandinavia. The ice tore
them away from the solid mountains; during its slow movement southwards
it carried them with it, and when it melted the blocks were left on the
spot